"Ferryman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boat for them. Come, I want to get over and have a run on dry land, for I'm as cold as a stone. This living like a duck, half in the water and half out, don't suit me at all. The next river we cross over, I'll make Henri get another ferryman." ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... home for several days. One night when the waves were rolling high on the stream, he sat in the office of the hotel, which stood on the bank of the river. A cheerful log fire glowed in the old fireplace. Pence Oiler, the ferryman, sat in the corner puffing at a cob pipe. Suddenly, came the loud cry of "Hello!" When the door was opened, a young man and woman came into the office. They had hurriedly gotten out of a buggy and both seemed ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... — N. sailor, mariner, navigator; seaman, seafarer, seafaring man; dock walloper [Slang]; tar, jack tar, salt, able seaman, A. B.; man-of-war's man, bluejacket, galiongee^, galionji^, marine, jolly, midshipman, middy; skipper; shipman^, boatman, ferryman, waterman^, lighterman^, bargeman, longshoreman; bargee^, gondolier; oar, oarsman; rower; boatswain, cockswain^; coxswain; steersman, pilot; crew. aerial navigator, aeronaut, balloonist, Icarus; aeroplanist^, airman, aviator, birdman, man-bird, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... taxi was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be there ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... the two strangers and their trophies of the chase, on the careless ferryman, and the few stragglers from the ranch and the cabins. These last had gathered there to view the train and its people as they passed, for the ties on which the iron rails rested were still of green ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... reached the ferry, the boat was tied at the near side, but deuce a ferryman could they see. So they began to shout and hallo, singly, and together, until Cluffe, in much ire and ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... down without fear. The fire in his living heart found him a way through the gloom of that place. He crossed the Styx, the black river that the gods name as their most sacred oath. Charon, the harsh old ferryman who takes the Shades across, forgot to ask of him the coin that every soul must pay. For Orpheus sang. There in the Underworld the song of Apollo would not have moved the poor ghosts so much. It would have amazed ...
— Old Greek Folk Stories Told Anew • Josephine Preston Peabody
... to the bridge, the passengers bustling about for a long time on landing. The ferryman collected his paper roubles, the men continued merry-making with the girls. Their rugged forms— their chest, knees and chins were clearly discernible in the lights they carried. They all strolled up a narrow pathway, ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... ring off his arm Unto the dead man's wife: "Take that as an atoning gift For the Ferryman's young life." ...
— Grimhild's Vengeance - Three Ballads • Anonymous
... my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony? Clar. Oh, no; my dream was lengthened after life; Oh, then began the tempest to my soul, Who passed, methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in-law, renowne'd Warwick; Who cried aloud, "What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence?" And so he vanished. Then came wandering by A shadow ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... into weeping, and when the news spread through the city no sounds but those of wailing were heard. Only the voice of Psyche was silent among them. She moved about as one that was sleeping, and indeed she felt as if the boat, with its grim ferryman, had already borne her across the Styx. So the days passed on, and one evening a white-clad priest arrived from the shrine to bid the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... said her mother cheerfully, while Reuben waved fresh signals to the obdurate ferryman, "I'm sure I don't mind, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... writings say that having naught To pay the ferryman, the churl refused To ferry him across the swollen stream, When he was raised and wafted through the air. What matter whether that all-powerful Love Which moves the worlds, and bears with all our sins, Sent him a chariot and steeds ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... at Auvers found a little log cabin in a wood in which the four men had spent the night. They were seen on the following days, wandering in the forest of l'Isle-Adam. At last, on April 1st they went to the ferryman of Meriel, Eloi Cousin, who was sheltering two gendarmes. While they were begging the ferryman to take them in his boat, the gendarmes appeared, and the men fled. A pistol shot struck one of them, and a second, who stopped ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... progress. What a display of neat ankles and deft feet in mocassins! What a clattering of sabots and shuffling of "beefs"! The perspiration rolled off the brow of the musician, and young Lecour was whirling round like a madcap with the daughter of the ferryman of Repentigny, when the latch was again lifted, and the door ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... tip as was ever given to a waiter or at a horse-race. There was nothing between Lucullus and the "bread line" except his last sweetbread; yet as a gentleman he gave it up to the ferryman rather than lose his poise ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... distinguished the ferry boat three-quarters of the way across the river, nearing the opposite bank. His "halloa" brought an answer from the ferryman. Cursing his luck in missing the boat by so short a margin of time, he sat down heavily on the stout wooden wall that guarded the approach. It would be ten or fifteen minutes before the tortoise-like craft could recross and pick him up. His gaze instantly went downstream. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... spoke again in that strained whisper. "Mother, when I went to sleep I dreamt a ferryman came for us, and his boat was close to the shore, and we were stepping in when you called me back. I knew your voice, and you said 'Susie' quite plainly. I wouldn't go, and I wouldn't let him take Dick! I screamed and held him ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... now Izdubar stood by the shore of the Waters of Death, which are wide and deep, and separate the land of the living from that of the blessed and immortal dead. Here he encountered the ferryman URUBEL; to him he opened his heart and spoke of the friend whom he had loved and lost, and Urubel took him into his ship. For one month and fifteen days they sailed on the Waters of Death, until they reached that distant land by the mouth of the rivers, where Izdubar at length ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... guided by the Sibyl, after a great sacrifice, AEneas passed into a gloomy cave, where he came to the river Styx, round which flitted all the shades who had never received funeral rites, and whom the ferryman, Charon, would not carry over. The Sibyl, however, made him take AEneas across, his boat groaning under the weight of a human body. On the other side stood Cerberus, but the Sibyl threw him a cake of honey and of some opiate, and he lay asleep, while AEneas ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... at the Ferry. The "up coach" had passed, with lights unextinguished, and the "outsides" still asleep. The ferryman had gone up to the Ferry Mansion House, swinging his lantern, and had found the sleepy-looking "all night" bar-keeper on the point of withdrawing for the day on a mattress under the bar. An Indian half-breed, porter ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... four Northerners had taken a grateful farewell of the unsuspecting Mrs. Page, and were hurrying along the bank of the Tennessee. By four o'clock in the afternoon they had reached a point directly opposite Chattanooga. Here they found a ferryman, just as they had been given to expect, with his flat "horse-boat" moored to the shore. He was a fat, comfortable-looking fellow, as he sat in tailor-fashion on the little wharf, smoking a corncob pipe as ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... The ferryman was a poor man, and was likely to remain a poor man to the end of his life. Hardly a day passed in which he did not sigh to be rich, and complain of the unequal and unjust distribution of property. He could point to a score of men who had not worked half so hard as he ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... If you were ferryman at Charon's ford, And I came down the bank and called to you, Waved you my hand and asked to come aboard, And threw you kisses there, what ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... when they rise to the surface make a terrific splashing. At one place on the Hastings River, called Blackman's Point, a party of four of us took thirteen fish, the heaviest of which was 62 lb. and the lightest 9 lb. Next morning, however, the Blackman's Point ferryman, who always set a line from his punt when he turned in, showed us one of over 90 lb. When they grow to such a size as this they are not eaten locally, as the flesh is very often full of thin, thread-like worms. The young fish, however, ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... But look, if you want to take the train back to Paris...." Marcel pulled up the horse to a standstill. "If you want to take the train, cross that field by the foot path and keep right along the road to the left till you come to the river. There's a ferryman. The town's Herblay, and there's a station.... And any Sunday before noon I'll be at 3 rue des Eveques, Reuil. You must come and we'll ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the catacombs, or place of burial; all the persons who were brought to be there deposited, had an offering made on their account, upon being landed on this shore. Hence arose the notion of the fee of Charon, and of the ferryman of that name. This building stood upon the banks of a canal, which communicated with the Nile: but that which is now called Kiroon, stands at some distance to the west, upon the lake [360]Moeris; where only the kings of Egypt had a right of sepulture. The ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... we crossed the Grand River, on a day so stormy that the ferryman would not take the "scow" across. We rowed ourselves over in a crazy boat, which seemed about to fill and sink when we got to the middle of the river, and attended service at Port Hill, one of the most desolate- looking places I ever saw. We saw Lenox Island, where on St. Ann's day ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... mingled with earth near the top, but below 2 or 3 feet the mass is of clean shell to a depth, as exposed by the river, of at least 10 feet. The bottom of the deposit is not visible, being concealed by mud piled against it in high water. The old ferryman says it is 20 feet deep. Although the shell piles are built up higher than the bottom lands to the rear or on either side, they are submerged several feet in great freshets. It is impossible to explain this fact otherwise than by the assumption that the bed of the river ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... river, at Cashway Ferry, I observed that the ferryman had no hair on either side of his head, I asked him the cause. He informed me that it was caused by his master's cane. I said, you have a very bad master. 'Yes, a very bad master.' I understood that he was once a number of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... a short cut, and took them between rows of graves, regardless of Sybil's protesting shudders, to a tiny stile that led down an alley to the riverside. Here there was a tumbledown wharf, and an old ferryboat which worked on a chain. Years ago a ferryman had had charge of it, but there was so little traffic that it was no longer worth his while, so the boat had been left for passengers to use as they liked. It was lying now at the edge of the wharf. The girls, following Edith, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... infamous, monstrous slaveries. Gape, earth, and let the fiends infernal view A [276] hell as hopeless and as full of fear As are the blasted banks of Erebus, Where shaking ghosts with ever-howling groans Hover about the ugly ferryman, To get a passage to Elysium! [277] Why should we live?—O, wretches, beggars, slaves!— Why live we, Bajazeth, and build up nests So high within the region of the air, By living long in this oppression, That all the world will see and laugh to scorn The former triumphs of our mightiness ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... on and came to a wide river over which he must go. The ferryman asked him what his trade was, and what he knew. "I know everything," answered he. "Then you can do me a favour," said the ferryman, "and tell me why I must always be rowing backwards and forwards, and am never set ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... sleep, but be changed. Only one traditional circumstance he has received with Dante and Michael Angelo, the boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image, he has not stopped at the scowling ferryman of the one, nor at the sweeping blow and demon dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is dashed into his destruction; nor is it the sluggish Lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... the waves like a sea-bird. Meroe, dressed in her mariner's costume, stayed at the prow, her black hair streaming in the wind. Occasionally the white foam of the ocean, bursting from the prow of the boat, flung its stinging froth in the young woman's noble face. Albinik knew these coasts as the ferryman of the solitary moors of Brittany knows their least detours. The bark seemed to play with the high waves. From time to time the couple saw in the distance the tent of Caesar, recognizable by its purple flaps, and saw gleaming in the ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... criminality, "Les Contes Immoraux," laboriously invented lifeless things with creaky joints, pitiful lay figures that fall to dust as soon as the book is closed, and in the dust only the figures of the terrible ferryman and the unfortunate Dora remain. "Madame Potiphar" cost me forty francs, and I never read ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... puffed at her cigar. "Do you know the history of the family?" she asked. "The founder was a rough old ferryman. He fought his rivals so well that in the end he owned all the boats; and then some one discovered the idea of buying legislatures and building railroads, and he went into that. It was a time when they simply grabbed things—if you ever look into it, you'll ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... broader streams, where fording was impossible and traffic was perforce carried by ferry, the canoe and the keel boat of the earliest days gave way in time to the ordinary "flat" or barge. At first the obligation of the ferryman to the public, though recognized by English law, was ignored in America by legislators and monopolists alike. Men obtained the land on both sides of the rivers at the crossing places and served the public ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... oppression of confinement in the airless streets to the liberty and immensity of the water and the night we passed. It was but two minutes ere we touched the shore and said good-night, and went our way and left the ferryman. But in that brief passage he had opened our souls to everlasting things—the freshness, and the darkness, and the kindness of the brooding, all-enfolding night ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... miles from Stockton and about the same distance from the mines. We plodded slowly along, following up the Stanislaus river. The first place we reached having a name was Knight's Ferry. We were out of money and clothes when we arrived at this place. The ferryman took us across without pay and bade us remain all night. Up to this time we wore buckskin trousers. I went out hunting and the rain came down in torrents and my trousers got drenched. They stretched so long I cut them off so I could walk. When they dried they had shrunken ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... charge what they please to boats that go through, and if they don't pay all they have to do is to stay out, and go around a few thousand miles. It is like a ferry across a little stream out west, where there is no other way to cross, except to wade or go around, and the old ferryman sizes up the wagon load that wants to cross, and takes all they have got loose, and then the travelers are ahead of the game, cause if they didn't cross the stream they would have to camp on the bank until the stream dried up. Some day an earthquake will split ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... bridge is our pride. I must laugh always When I think back of the olden days, And all the trouble and misery That with the wretched boat would be; And many cheerful Christmas nights I spent at the ferryman's house—the lights From our windows I'd watch and count them o'er, And could not reach the ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... hands on me. I shrieked aloud. The son of Zeus turned him and quick let fly A shaft that, hurtling through the Centaur's chest, Transfixed him. Feeling that his end was come, The monster said to me, "Old Oeneus' child, As thou art my last fare, hearken to me: Thou shall have cause to thank thy ferryman. If thou wilt bear away this clotted blood That marks the spot whereon the arrow steeped In the Lernaean Hydra's venom fell; In it thou'lt ever find a spell to bind The heart of Heracles, and to prevent His loving any woman in thy stead." Of this love-charm, my friends, ...
— Specimens of Greek Tragedy - Aeschylus and Sophocles • Goldwin Smith
... ever been any Mormon preachers in that country. They said there had not been any there. The young women were modest and genteel in behavior. I passed on to the Cumberland River, was set over the river by the ferryman, and lodged ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... near Lacedaemon, and there she found a hole leading to the Underworld. A ghostly ferryman rowed her over the River of Death, and took one of her copper coins. Then a monstrous dog with three heads sprang out, but Psyche fed him with one of her honey-cakes, and entered the hall of Proserpine, the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... interfere; but when Friend Hopper drew a volume from his pocket and read to him the laws applicable to the case, he became alarmed, and said the boy must be given up. Whereupon, Friend Hopper directed the child to go on deck, which he was ready enough to do; and the ferryman soon helped him on ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... together spitefully. There was mockery of our foolhardy enterprise in the soft whispering sough of the water, as I heard it lapper beneath the ferry-boat that lay ready to cross to the other side. Old Hans, the Prince's ferryman, snored in his boat. Above in the women's chambers a light went to and fro. I judged that it was in the bower of the Lady Ysolinde. But not a string of my heart moved. For pity is so weak and love so strong that all my nature was now on the strain forward towards Helene and the Wolfsberg, like ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... to a close. It had been a good meeting; the church had been revived, and there had been important additions. I took dinner with Bro. Brown, and in the afternoon we rode toward Ripley. On crossing the ferry at Crooked Creek, "Old Rob Burton," the ferryman, a tall, stalwart Kentuckian, looking down on me, asked, "Are you the man that's goin' ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... public-service companies, such as electric lighting or gas companies, to make the same rates to consumers, large or small. This also was very possibly the common law, and required no new statutes; there are cases reported as far back as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries where, for instance, a ferryman was punished for charging less for the ferriage of a large drove of sheep or cattle than for a smaller number, "contrary to the common custom of the realm." Nine years before this statute is the Assize of Bread and Beer, attempting to fix the price of bread according to the cost of wheat, ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... beyond these springs, we reached the valley of the Merrimack, just at nightfall; and notwithstanding the threatening atmosphere, and the commencement of rain, before we descended to the stream, we prevailed with the ferryman to go down and set us over, which we urged with the view of reaching a house within less than a mile of the other bank. He landed us at the right spot; but the darkness had now become so intense that we could not keep the road, and groped our ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... graves by the North American Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the mouth of the dead by the Greeks to pay Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, and for a similar purpose in the hand of a deceased Irishman. The Greenlanders bury with a child a dog, for they say a dog will find his way anywhere. In the grave of the Viking warrior were buried his horn and armour in order that he might ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... seventeen, Lincoln, the strongest and "longest" younker of the neighborhood, was let out by his father for six dollars a month and board to a James Taylor, ferryman of Anderson's Creek and the Ohio River. He was also expected to do the farmwork and other jobs, as well as the chores in and about the house. This included tending to the baby—the good wives uniting to pronounce Abe ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... back way, lord, and up the meadows to the ford if the ferryman is asleep. But I must go before ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... genial spirit deserves, and not linger on into a twilight life with failing senses. When his memory and his pipe and his books begin to fail him, when those keen old eyes grow dim and he can no longer go to sniff the salt air on the river-wall—then may the quick and quiet ferryman take dear old John ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... to the reprobate's grave and stood at the foot of it, looking at the sky, gorgeous with the descent of the sun. To my English eyes, accustomed to giant trees, broad lawns, and stately mansions, the landscape was wild and inhospitable. The ferryman was already tugging at the rope on his way back (I had told him that I did not intend to return that way), and presently I saw him make the painter fast to the south bank; put on his coat; and trudge homeward. I turned to the grave at my feet. Those who had interred ...
— The Miraculous Revenge - Little Blue Book #215 • Bernard Shaw
... traps. Another American, who spouted blood and destruction on all political subjects, was an itinerant bee-farmer. At Walnut Grove, bustling with life, the few Americans consisted of the storekeeper, the saloonkeeper, the butcher, the keeper of the drawbridge, and the ferryman. Yet two thriving towns were in Walnut Grove, one Chinese, one Japanese. Most of the land was owned by Americans, who lived away from it and were continually selling ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... provided short-cuts were, for the most part, not operating. Tom gathered that information at breakfast. He had no intention of trying to cross at the Chattanooga ferry, for the Confederate guards there would be dangerously strong, and it remained to find some ferryman who could be bribed to risk the trip. That ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... his papers, and went out in dead silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him with ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich |
